I’m about to rent my first commercial property. I’ve found the property and ticks all the right boxes. People keep saying I need to use a solicitor. I don’t mind using one, and have set aside money to do so, and I’ve been recommended one, however What would his role be?

To read the lease and explain it to you. Renting a commercial property is nothing like renting a residential one (where tennet has all sorts of legal protections)

Length of lease
Rent revisions (upwards onky etc)
Ability to sub-let / re-assign
Liability for rennovations / repairs especially at the end of the lease
Personal liability in the event the business cannot pay
Business rates
Restrictions on usage
….

Liability for rennovations / repairs especially at the end of the lease

pay particular attention to that.

It depends how used to reading contracts you are

Look at a copy of the lease and if there are things you are unsure of then , yes,get a solicitor to explain it. Also,don’t be scared to ask for alterations to it if its not suitable as is.Be aware of everything that you are liable to pay for.This is crucial.
I’ve let commercial properties for around 25 years,some with basic lease agreements and others more complex.
At the moment i have a tenant on a 15 year lease,which is around 40 pages long,and cost £1500 to draw up.

Just out the other side of this. Use a solicitor. It’s not just for you – think about assignment at future date (bigger premises, smaller premises). Getting in is easy, getting out needs to be too (within reason). A question I wish I’d asked before engaging a solicitor – ‘has your lease been drawn up by a solicitor’. If it hasn’t it could be a tricky process.

Liability for rennovations / repairs especially at the end of the lease

pay particular attention to that.

Absolutely – and get the current condition of the property documented and signed off. The landlord in my old shop tried to get me to pay for replacing doors that had been removed decades before I moved in.

Even if the current landlord doesn’t try to **** you over the person he sells the lease to probably will.
Make sure you know everything about the lease.

He will read the lease and give you advice on the terms of the lease, its fairness, the conditions it imposes and the protections it offers to both you and the landlord.

If you then follow his advice he also takes on liability for the advice he gives you, this can be very useful. We leased a commercial property with what we thought was an option to buy, when we tried to exercise the option we had to pay £70,000 more that we had been led to believe. Our solicitor had read the lease wrong and as a consequence the advice he gave us was demonstrably wrong. His insurers paid out the £70k.

Had we had not of used him, we would have never spotted the faulty clause in the lease and would have been out of pocket.

For the level of protection it offers you it is worth using a specialist solicitor.

^all good advice. The repairing obligation can be the real killer; I’m currently dealing with a £25k claim by the landlord for dilapidations on a two year office sub-lease, total rent for the period being less! You may want a schedule of condition drawn up to make life easier at lease end – can just DIY as a photographic record and have it as a schedule to the lease.
One other point not mentioned is break clauses – do you want the option of an early exit? This may push up the rent, or cause the landlord to talk of a premium on exit = penalty for taking the break.
I often find that using a local agent to get to heads of terms helps to get the price down, and rent-free periods up, such that the cost of instruction is covered.

You should read the lease yourself and understand it and in an addition use a solicitor . The solicitor will no doubt spot things you have not or explain things you have misunderstood and even a totally useless one who understood less than you will carry professional indemnity insurance to compensate you for his errors .

Thank you for all your replies. I was going to use a solicitor, just wanted to know what I needed to ask him. I have what I believe to be a very good one that has come recommended from someone who rents out a lot of properties.

It’s only a small unit 2300ft and is a 5 year lease with a 3 year break clause. however I want to make sure I have the ability to upgrade to a bigger unit on the same park with the same landlord without any financial risk.

Thanks for all your advice.